ARTICLES ABOUT DAVID SIMON BY DATE - PAGE 3

Gene Cassidy thought he was lucky to survive being shot in the head twice 25 years ago when he was a Baltimore policeman, so a second near-death ordeal recently seemed unreal. Just 27 years old, Cassidy lost his sight after a man he was trying to arrest on an assault warrant fired at him. The shooting, and his survival, made Cassidy a legend in Baltimore police ranks and became fodder for "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets," the book by David Simon, and later a TV series, about crime in Baltimore.

Baltimore-area viewers won't see it in their TV listings, but this week a program will premiere on the Al Jazeera English channel that could do more to shape the world's image of their city than any other media coverage or civic promotion done all year. "Baltimore: Anatomy of an American City" will debut Tuesday night to a potential worldwide audience of 260 million homes. And what those viewers will mainly see is a landscape of young men on bleak street corners, block after block of boarded-up rowhouses, drugs, death, crime scenes and prisons.

De'Andre L. McCullough, the young protagonist of the book “The Corner”, which chronicled a year on a drug-plagued street corner in West Baltimore and was turned into an HBO miniseries, died Wednesday of an apparent overdose in Baltimore County, according to police and relatives. It marked the end of a long struggle with addiction for McCullough, 35, who showed promise of getting his life on track but was being sought at the time of his death on warrants charging him with two armed robberies at Baltimore pharmacies, police said.

Listeners to the Kojo Nnamdi Show got a bit more than they bargained for when "The Wire" creator David Simon called in this afternoon to offer his two cents on the Kwame Brown story. Kojo was in the middle of a conversation about the disgraced D.C. City Council Chairman, who recently resigned after criminal charges. The talk show host was chatting with staff from WAMU, local journalists and a former prosecutor when Simon picked up the phone. Simon had apparently been listening to the discussion -- with growing irritation -- while driving around in the car, and got on the phone.

Thank you for printing the full text of David Simon's Georgetown University commencement address. It was the best I have read, excepting Woody Allen's, of course. If Mr. Simon made anyone uncomfortable, good. Because it needed to be said, and it needed to be said now. I thank him for being gutsy enough to say it. Rosellen Fleishman, Baltimore

David Simon whose HBO show "Treme" is shot in New Orleans, is venting to the media site Poynter.org about plans to cut back the city's newspaper, the Times-Picayune. News broke this week that the paper's owners plan to publish the Times-Picayune just three days a week starting this fall. There will also be staff cuts. "It's grievous news as it would be for any American city," Simons told Poynter in an email, adding, "But New Orleans isn't immune. No one is. And this slow suicide - as the great Molly Ivins called it - will continue unabated until the industry swallows hard and takes its product - every last newspaper - behind a paywall.

The greatest commencement address ever is now more than three decades old. And it's safe to say it will never be surpassed or even equaled. It belongs to the ages. In 1979, its author summed up the condition of modern man by noting that, quote, more than at any other time in history, humanity is at the crossroads: One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness; the other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. Unquote. Bang. That's all she wrote.

Fans of "The Wire" were taken aback to read that creator David Simon is sort of tired of their rah-rah, late-to-the-game enthusiasm. Simon on Thursday told the New York Times: I do have a certain amused contempt for the number of people who walk sideways into the thing and act like they were there all along. It's selling more DVDs now than when it was on the air. But I'm indifferent to who thinks Omar is really cool now, or that this is the best scene or this is the best season.

I would like to extend my sincerest thanks to David Simon and The Baltimore Sun for telling Gene Cassidy's remarkable story ("David Simon's 'Homicide' cop battling life on the streets once again," March 11). Gene is truly one of Baltimore's finest, ever. Sunday's article brought attention not only to this hometown hero but also to the need for living liver donors for Gene and others. The fortunate thing for those in need of a transplant is that the liver is one of only two organs that will regenerate if cut in half.

March 11, 2012 Seven-baker-twenty-four unit turns at Mosher and rumbles past that stretch of Appleton Street where Gene Cassidy took two in the head for the company, the first one stealing his eyesight, the second lodging in his brain beyond the skill of a surgeon's knife. Cassidy was 27 then, not even four years on the job, strong and lucky and hard-headed Irish enough that he refused to do the obvious and inevitable thing. He did not die. At University Hospital that night, the other patrol officers and detectives were told it was certain, that their friend would not make it. But Cassidy breathes still, and Appleton and Mosher looks much as it did in October 1987, when Cassidy tumbled out of his radio car to jack up a man wanted on an assault warrant.